they had a war in southern russia of some significance in 1774. so there must of had a lot of troops left over. they were approached obviously early in 1775. by june 1775, there is a report in one of the virginia newspapers that the crown was tried to hire russians. and they thought that -- that they had arranged, but it fell apart in the autumn of 1775, partly because frederick the great was telling catherine the great not to do it. and they were not fond of the notion of letting troops to go through german territory. at any event, it did not happen. after that, they had to turn to there werens -- the haiti about 50,000 german mercenaries, not all of the same time. >> i am jumping here, but, in the end, why do the patriots win? >> i think they won partly because it was such a challenge for the british from the start, the logistics' were enormously difficult, the number of the ships they needed, the number of troops. they did not have them. but even more than that, you had 13 colonies, large population, a number of them -- they had a lot of people